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According to the Brazilian news magazine Exame, Google has made Brazil the center of its Latin American operations, placing former country director Alexandre Hohagen at the helm.

Google is understood to have chosen Brazil for its superior regional performance. While the Mountain View, California-based search giant doesn’t comment on regional numbers, the article claims that Brazil is Google’s fastest growing market (hard to verify, but it’s certainly one of the fastest growing), generating an estimated $500 million per year in revenues. This is all the more impressive considering the Brazilian office was opened just three years ago and has only 200 employees.

The decision to run Latin American operations from Brazil comes soon after another decision to move all development and management of Orkut to that country, with most of the engineering in the city of Belo Horizonte. Orkut is Google’s social network, which enjoys most of its popularity in Brazil and India.

Brazil is also said to have the second largest number of Gmail accounts, perhaps because of the popularity of Orkut. Google’s biggest white labeled Gmail customer may also be in Brazil: iG, a portal with over 9 million accounts.

Google is still in the process of replacing Hohagen with a new country director for Brazil.

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Source: Mark Hendrickson

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When I wrote about the upcoming Orkut redesign yesterday I was hoping for something a little more…I don’t know. Inspiring? Instead we get new icons and rounded corners. I’d love to hear what some of the designers out there think about Orkut.

The new look for the second biggest social network on the planet is below. Here’s the old version. I’m underwhelmed.

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Source: Michael Arrington

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The upcoming Orkut redesign prompted us to check out Orkut’s page view numbers according to Comscore.

U.S. Comscore data shows, as expected, barely a blip from Orkut (Facebook shown for comparison). Orkut has 425 million monthly page views compared to 15 billion for Facebook:

But, wow, take a look at the worldwide Comscore numbers - Facebook doubles to 31 billion monthly page views, but Orkut jumps all the way up to 38 billion (we’ve also included some of the other big social networks for comparison in this chart):

Not that it adds much to the conversation, but Alexa agrees Orkut is bigger than Facebook in terms of page views.

Is this accurate? I don’t know. Compete barely shows Orkut as existing, let alone anywhere near Facebook’s traffic. But Orkut is famously popular in Brazil and other Non-U.S. countries. Perhaps, somehow, it is actually a social networking heavyweight.
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Source: Michael Arrington

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We rarely mention Google’s three year old social network Orkut these days. Except to point out down time or flawed Alexa stats that suggest it is bigger than MySpace. But now some real news.

Take a good look at that screen shot because Google is promising an “updated look” for the site. They are staging this to users in batches, so it may take a while to make its way to you.

Damn, I guess I need to add a friend or two. I sure hope they create a Facebook application. I can’t keep track of all of these social networks.

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Source: Michael Arrington

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We rarely mention Google’s three year old social network Orkut these days. Except to point out down time or flawed Alexa stats that suggest it is bigger than MySpace. But now some real news.

Take a good look at that screen shot because Google is promising an “updated look” for the site. They are staging this to users in batches, so it may take a while to make its way to you.

Damn, I guess I need to add a friend or two. I sure hope they create a Facebook application. I can’t keep track of all of these social networks.

Update: Check out the surprising Comscore analysis of Orkut.

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Source: Michael Arrington

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